Privacy Policy

The Hawthorne Gardening Company and its affiliated companies gather certain types of information from visitors. We are providing this privacy policy to help you understand the types of information we gather, how it is used and shared. This policy applies only to information collected online at The Hawthorne Gardening Company sites such as ecoscraps.com, hawthorne-garden.com, or where this privacy policy has been linked such as mobile apps (collectively, the “Hawthorne Websites”).

Information Collected

General Browsing Information: Any time you visit the Hawthorne Websites or use our downloadable apps, we may gather certain information by automated means, such as cookies and web beacons. This information includes browser characteristics, your service provider IP address, the search engine you may have used to locate the Hawthorne Websites, a unique device identifier, device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, information on actions taken on the Hawthorne Websites, and dates and times of visits.

Personal Information Voluntarily Provided: We gather personal information you provide to us (such as your name, address, testimonials, e-mail address, telephone number, demographic information, payment information) when you request information about a product or service, register on the Hawthorne Websites, request email reminders or email newsletters, sign up for a service, enter one of our sweepstakes or contests, take a survey or use any of the other interactive portions or features of the Hawthorne Websites. When personally identifiable information is requested on the Hawthorne Websites, some requests are marked as “Required”; this personally identifiable information is necessary to allow you to participate in the feature or service you’ve requested.

How Your Information Is Used

We use the information collected at the Hawthorne Websites for the following purposes:

To understand your needs and preferences, to develop, market, sell or provide products and services, and possibly to conduct surveys, research and evaluations.

To advertise our services or products.

To complete your request for services or respond to your use of features on the Hawthorne Websites.

To tailor your experience on the Hawthorne Websites to your interests and geographic region.

To respond to your inquires about our products and services.

To inform you of special events and offers or programs offered with our selected companies.

To operate, evaluate, manage, improve and develop The Hawthorne Gardening Company’s business and operations, administer accounts, collect and process payments.

To perform data analytics.

To detect and protect The Hawthorne Gardening Company and other third parties against error, negligence, fraud, theft and other illegal activities and to audit compliance with policies.

As permitted by, and to comply with, any legal or regulatory requirements.

In addition, we use information collected through cookies, web beacons and other automated means for purposes such as (i) customizing our users’ visits to Hawthorne Websites and apps, (ii) delivering content (including advertising) tailored to our users’ interests and the manner in which our users browse the Hawthorne Websites, and (iii) managing our business. We may supplement data we collect on the Hawthorne Websites through automated means with information about your location (such as your zip code) to provide you with content that may be of interest to you. We also use this information to help diagnose technical and service problems, and administer the Hawthorne Websites, identify users of the Hawthorne Websites, and gather demographic information about our users.

We also may use the information we obtain about you in other ways for which we provide specific notice at the time of collection.

Disclosure of Personal Information

We collect and maintain the personal information of our consumers for the use of The Hawthorne Gardening Company and its affiliated companies. We do not share your personally identifiable information with third parties other than as described below.

Selected Companies: The Hawthorne Gardening Company may work with select retailers and other companies at various times to provide expanded services that relate to Hawthorne Websites or its visitors. As part of such a relationship, The Hawthorne Gardening Company may share with these companies or these companies may interact with your browser, collect or have access to some or all of the information collected in connection with certain interactive functions offered on the Hawthorne Websites (such as, the E-Mail Reminder Service) or on other web sites where The Hawthorne Gardening Company provides advertisements and interactive functions.

Service Providers: The Hawthorne Gardening Company may use other companies and individuals to perform certain functions on our behalf. Examples include administering e-mail services, monitoring website activity and running special promotions, such as sweepstakes, contests or surveys. Such parties only have access to the personal information needed to perform these functions and may not use or store the information for any other purpose.

Business Transfers: In the event that The Hawthorne Gardening Company sells or transfers a particular portion of its business assets, consumer information may be one of the business assets transferred as part of the transaction. If substantially all of the assets of The Hawthorne Gardening Company or a The Hawthorne Gardening Company affiliated company or brands are acquired, consumer information may be transferred as part of the acquisition.

Compliance with Law/Safety: The Hawthorne Gardening Company may disclose specific personal information based on a good-faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to comply with or conform to the law or that such disclosure is necessary to protect the users of the Hawthorne Websites, the Website itself, or the public.

Retention of Personal Information

The Hawthorne Gardening Company may retain the information it collects on the Hawthorne Websites as long as necessary to accomplish the purpose for which the information was collected. In some cases, The Hawthorne Gardening Company is required by law to retain the information it collects for a specified period of time.

Policies on Children

To ensure compliance with federal law, The Hawthorne Gardening Company does not knowingly collect or maintain information provided by children under the age of 13.

Use of Cookies

The Hawthorne Gardening Company may collect certain information by automated means, such as cookies and web beacons. Through these automated collection methods, we obtain “clickstream data,” which is a log of content on which a visitor clicks while browsing a website or using an app. As the visitor clicks through the website or uses an app, a record of the action may be collected and stored. We may link certain data elements we have collected through automated means, such as your browser information, with other information we have obtained about you to let us know, for example, whether you have opened an email we sent to you. You may modify your browser settings through the “help” section of the toolbar to disable the use of cookies. Please note, by doing this certain features on our website may not function correctly and you may be required to reenter your information more frequently.

We may use third-party web analytics services on the Hawthorne Websites, such as those of Google Analytics. These service providers help us analyze how users use the Hawthorne Websites. The information collected for this purpose (including your IP address and other information collected by automated means) will be disclosed to or collected directly by these service providers. To learn about opting out of Google Analytics, please click here.

The providers of third-party apps, tools, plug-ins and widgets on the Hawthorne Websites, such as Facebook “Like” buttons, also may use automated means to collect information regarding your use of the websites and apps and your interactions with these features. This information is subject to the privacy policies or notices of these providers.

Interest-Based Advertising

On the Hawthorne Websites, we may collect information about your online activities for use in providing you with advertising about products and services tailored to your individual interests. This section of our Privacy Policy provides details and explains how to exercise your choices. You may see certain ads on other websites because we participate in advertising networks. Advertising networks allow us to target our messaging to users through demographic, interest-based and contextual means. These networks track your online activities over time by collecting information through automated means, including through the use of cookies, web server logs and web beacons. The networks use this information to show you advertisements that may be tailored to your individual interests. The information our ad networks may collect includes information about your visits to websites that participate in the relevant advertising networks, such as the pages or advertisements you view and the actions you take on the websites. This data collection takes place both on our websites and on third-party websites that participate in the ad networks. This process also helps us track the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. To learn how to opt out of this advertising networks interest-based advertising, please visit the consumer opt-out page at Digital Advertising Alliance click here or NAI click here

Accessing Hawthorne Websites from Outside of the United States

If you are visiting the Hawthorne Websites from a location outside of the United States, your connection will be through and to servers located in the United States. Any information you provide during your visit will be processed and maintained on our Web server and/or other internal systems located within the United States.

External Links

The Hawthorne Websites contains links to other sites that are not a part of The Hawthorne Gardening Company family; The Hawthorne Gardening Company is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such sites. To help ensure the protection of your privacy, The Hawthorne Gardening Company recommends that you review the privacy policy of any site you visit via a link from the Hawthorne Websites.

Passwords

To access registration information that you create on the Hawthorne Websites, you will need to use a password that you create. To protect the integrity of the information contained in this record, you should not disclose or otherwise reveal your password to third parties.

Public Forums

The Hawthorne Gardening Company may make blogs, chat rooms, forums, message boards, and/or news groups available to its users at various times on the Hawthorne Websites. Please remember that, unless otherwise stated, any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information in these areas (including uploading photos into these areas). The Hawthorne Gardening Company has specific terms of use for these features and you must agree to comply with these terms of use prior to your initial use of these public forums.

Correcting and Updating Information

You can update or modify your information by contacting The Hawthorne Gardening Company as described below.

Updates to Privacy Policy

This privacy policy may be revised over time as new features are added to the Hawthorne Websites. Should there be a material change to our information collection or use practices, the change will be applied only to information collected on a going forward basis and the “Effective Date” of the policy will be updated.

Security Statement

The Hawthorne Gardening Company takes your privacy seriously and values its relationship with you. We will take reasonable physical, technical and organizational measures to safeguard and secure any personal data you provide to us.

Your Options

You may always discontinue your receipt of future email newsletters and/or other email communications you previously requested from The Hawthorne Gardening Company by unsubscribing in the email newsletter or contacting The Hawthorne Gardening Company as described below.